You’ll Golf Better If You Think Tiger Has Used Your Clubs

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The finding: People who believed that a professional golfer had used their club putted more accurately than other people who played with the same club.

The research: Sally Linkenauger and four colleagues recruited 41 right-handed golfers. Each was given a high-end putter and asked to attempt 10 two-meter putts on an artificial green. As they were handed the club, golfers in a randomly chosen group were told that PGA player Ben Curtis had used it, while a control group was told nothing. Before putting, each subject estimated the size of the hole by drawing it. Golfers who believed they were using Curtis’s club estimated the hole to be 9% larger in diameter and sank 32% more putts than the control group did.

Sports Superstition Has a Measurable Cognitive Effect

The belief that they were using a club a champion had played with actually affected the way golfers perceived a hole’s size. On average, they estimated it to be 9% larger than a control group of golfers did.

The challenge: Will you really play a sport better just because you think a pro has used your equipment? Dr. Linkenauger, defend your research.

Linkenauger: In our study we found evidence of “positive contagion”: People who believed that a professional’s skills had rubbed off on a piece of equipment performed better while using it. Contagion is an idea from social psychology. It means that when someone touches an object, they leave behind the essence of themselves on it. This is part of the reason people value autographs—the fact that a famous person has touched and signed the paper makes it feel very intimate, as if the person has given you a piece of themselves.

HBR: Isn’t this just a variation of the placebo effect?

“Placebo effect” is a vague term. We think there are many issues at work here, such as priming effects, in which exposure to a stimulus predisposes people to react a certain way. For instance, in some experiments researchers took Asian American women and gave them a math test. Before one group took the test, the researchers emphasized the fact that they were women, which primed them to recall the stereotype that women aren’t good at math. With the second group, they emphasized that they were Asian, which encouraged them to recall the stereotype that Asians are good at math. In fact, the group that was primed with “women” performed significantly worse on the test than the group primed with “Asian.” That shows people’s performance can be influenced by subtle factors. In our study the subjects’ belief that they were playing with a professional’s club gave them confidence and increased their self-efficacy. They thought they’d perform better, so they did.

Is that confidence why they perceived the hole to be larger?

Previous research had shown that after someone successfully sinks a putt, they perceive the hole as larger. We wanted to look at people’s perceptions before they putted, because it suggests their level of confidence and positive imagery, which can influence performance. In another set of experiments, we used projectors to manipulate golfers’ perceptions of the size of a hole. We’d take a five-centimeter hole, which is about half the size of a regular golf hole. For one set of subjects we’d project images of smaller holes around the real hole, making it look larger. For another set, we’d project bigger holes, making the real hole appear smaller. When the real hole looked larger, people sank more putts.

In our celebrity-obsessed culture, is it really so surprising that people believe an item touched by someone famous has magical properties?

There are people who criticize contagion research as proving something that people already inherently know. And of course, entire industries—such as the memorabilia business—are built on the mystique that surrounds objects used by famous people. A few months ago I was in a museum in Salzburg that has the piano Mozart used to compose music. It sits in the middle of the room with just a rope barrier around it. When I was there, this little kid suddenly jumped on the seat and started banging on the keys. There was a guard across the room—I thought he was going to have a heart attack. It was a funny moment because from a technical standpoint, it’s not a very nice piano—it’s very old and doesn’t sound very good. As pianos go, it shouldn’t be worth anything. But because Mozart used it, it’s probably priceless. The point is that we don’t value objects just because of their quality and our ability to use them—we also value objects for reasons that have nothing to do with their functional or objective value. Our research shows that these “unreasonable” beliefs may be useful in some ways, presumably because they affect our ability to perform successfully. I think in these cases, people are able to off-load some of the pressure they feel onto an object they believe has some type of positive influence on their performance.

If I were to write an article using Malcolm Gladwell’s laptop, would it be perceptibly better?

My colleagues and I have talked about that. What if you used Einstein’s pen while taking a math test? Some social psychology research suggests it would make a difference, due to the priming effect. Good writing is subjective, though, so it might be difficult to prove you were more successful. But generally, if it makes you more confident and motivated, it will help you perform better. Look at baseball players. They won’t wash their socks for months if they’re playing well. They think their dirty socks are helping them, and as long as they think it, there’s less pressure on them, and that helps them play well.

When Tiger Woods was struggling last season, would he have performed better if he’d borrowed a putter from a higher-ranked player like Rory McIlroy?

Probably not. Someone who’s already so good at that sport might actually play worse. Tiger knows Rory’s limitations, and no matter what their rankings were at the time, he probably doesn’t really believe Rory is better than he is.

In my lab we have an old book about perception that we jokingly call “the bible,” and it is constantly passed around from one student to another to inspire ideas for new research. All of us have an electronic copy of the book, but people feel they’re more likely to come up with a brilliant idea when looking through the old paper copy that’s full of different people’s handwritten notes and Post-its. This is entirely speculation, but people in offices can use objects to try to boost their performance, too. Any little bit of confidence goes a long way.

A version of this article appeared in the July–August 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Sally Linkenauger is a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany.